


Circles in Shattered Mirrors

by InfinityIllusion



Series: Stuck in an Hourglass, Drowning in Sand [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Failsafe AU, Gen, Identity Issues, Kinda time travel?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 14:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12301482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfinityIllusion/pseuds/InfinityIllusion
Summary: Dick Grayson has just spent the majority of his life in the Failsafe simulation.  Adjusting isn't something that happens easily.





	Circles in Shattered Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Fine (But not Okay)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11588583) by [CharlotteDaBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm). 



> So this is the slightly expanded version of the fic I posted a while back on Tumblr, based on CharlotteDaBookworm's fic Fine (But not Okay), with their permission. I've been meaning to post this for awhile, but things came up, so yeah.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Young Justice, no money is being made off this, much thanks to CharlotteDaBookworm for her permission to play in her version of the YJ sandbox!

* * *

He’d fallen asleep with a smile on his face – they boys thought they were being sneaky, but anything that happened in the Batcave, he knew about – especially since Babs was keeping tabs on them, too.  She had hinted, thus confirming his thoughts about how the plans were for his 45th birthday party, saying how she needed to know sooner rather than later if she should have the fire department on speed dial with warnings for various explosives and streamers, like they’d needed the last time the three of them got to plotting.

Dick had laughed, and joked about the state of the kitchen, which was something Jason took pride in, when he came over and when he stayed, as he was doing more recently.

He had fallen asleep in the master bedroom of Wayne Manor, where he had moved 20 years ago, as the final nail in the coffin in his hope that Bruce would turn up on the doorstep with a wild story of how he’d been lost in time or how he had managed to have an escape plotted, and was just stuck in space until then.

He wakes up on a metal table.  The lights aren’t right for the Medbay, or the cave, nor are they right for any of his villains with medically-inclined tendencies, but there is no ruling out a new player.

Analyze.  Nothing making him feel any groggier than if he’d overslept, no cotton taste in his mouth, no pain.  Stiffness in his limbs, as if he’d been in the same position for hours, possibly days.  Voices from long dead friends echoed around the room.

Assess.  He isn’t strapped down, although he was in a different costume than the one he’d had to assume in the face of Batman’s death.  No injuries, apart from a few lingering bruises, but they were clearly nearly a week old.

Conclusions.  He (probably) hadn’t been kidnapped.  It didn’t feel like one of the Flash’s virtual reality machines.  Perhaps one of the younger magic users had decided to play a prank, or lost control of their powers.

Dick sits up and stares at the room.

“Where are we?”  He asks, voice high – and he’s glad he didn’t try to use Batman’s voice, because that would have been amusing, like when Tim and Dami – no, those thoughts have no place here.

“You were locked in a simulation meant to test your responses in the face of failure – essentially, there was no way for you to beat the simulation,” Batman – _Bruce_ – growls. “Unfortunately, Ms. Martian’s subconscious hijacked the simulation and ultimately altered the simulation we had placed you all in when Artemis ‘died,’ and trapped any who ‘died’ within a coma.  Upon getting placed in a coma within the simulation, J’onn was able to contact M’gann, allowing her to break the simulation, thus bringing Robin and her back to reality, and bringing the remaining team members from their respective comas.”

Dick sits on the table, staring at the floor of Mount Justice, as Robin.  Not Batman, who he has been since he was 18 and nearly broad enough to be mistaken as his dead mentor.  Not Nightwing, who he had been in the interim, because a tiny Batman was not going to inspire fear in the hearts of anyone, even if people would believe that Batman could be de-aged.  It was Gotham, after all.

Kid Flash hugs the Flash, and from the musculature and hair-style, that’s Wally West and Barry Allen.  Superboy remains on his table, scowling at the wall, but stroking Wolf’s head, as M’gann is comforted by J’onn.  Artemis flees, but Black Canary – Dinah Lance – catches her in a quick hug before she can leave the room. Kaldur’ahm, too, seems to wish to leave, but remains, if only because he was – is – the leader and it is expected, necessary, to keep an eye on the team.

Batman comes to stand behind him, behind Dick, behind _Robin_ and this isn’t something Dick can do – not without preparation, not when he still feels nearly 45.  But his limbs are cooperating with him and he can’t disappear into the shadows.

“Robin.”  And that’s Bruce, or an amalgamation of his mind’s memories of Bruce, all the undercurrents standing out to Dick as clear as day, even though they’ve been apart from each other.  Worry, concern, frustration, relief, anger – but not at Robin.

“Hey…Batman,” Robin says, weary.

Batman stares at him, and declares, “You will all have mandatory sessions with Black Canary.  Now go home.”

He sweeps Robin under Batman’s cape, and Robin stumbles along after him into the old, incredibly outdated Zeta-tubes.

(Roy and he had replaced those many times.  They had moved on to M-clocks, personal wristwatches that functioned as the former tubes, with the same destination limitation, which were embedded within rocks, concrete, or in alley walls around the world.)

They make it back to the cave, and nothing could force Dick to stay there for any longer than it takes to strip from his uniform – he forgets where the zippers are and nearly electrocutes himself a few times.  He can feel the tears pooling, the scream pressing up and back against his throat and he runs to his _old_ room, barricades the door, and cries into a pillow that doesn’t even smell right, anymore.

~IiI~

Dick Grayson strolls into a computer store and buys a laptop.

In his room, after justifying the purchase to Bruce and Alfred (“I’m trying to create a new program and I don’t want it to crash my school laptop”), he keeps it deregistered, pulls up his own, albeit simplified version of Word, and pours out his memories behind closed doors and the weight of nearly 30 years’ worth of experiences.

~IiI~ 

“Hey, Roy?”

“What, Robin.  I’m still not joining your Justice Scouts,” Roy grouses. “I’m doing fine working a solo gig.”

Dick sighs, remembering this stage, and how Roy needed to find himself before he was comfortable enough to really grow into his role as one of the JLA’s pillars.  “Never mind, Roy.  It’s nothing.”

Robin hangs up the phone, throws it away from him and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.  He refuses to acknowledge that they might have wiped tears from his eyes, instead focusing on attempting to relieve the eye strain brought on by staring at the computer for days on end.

His body might betray its age, forcing him to drop off for a few hours of rest here and there, but he’s worked around that before – had trained himself to stretch his limits, and he knows his body well enough to realize that he can do it again, using the same methods.

~IiI~

Following the ill-fated simulation, which is in the files as the “Failsafe Mission,” the team is quieter, solemner for the losses they had thought they had, for the sacrifices they made.

Robin and M’gann are the last to make an appearance.

The team drifts back together, sharing trauma and new mission success to create new relationships, repair the old ones that had been shredded by the simulation.

Artemis works on her situational awareness, works on her shots because she will not be taken down by a long-range weapon again.

Kaldur steps up as a leader, ensures he gives himself equal value in the equation of the team, the civilians, the villains.

Superboy starts learning tactics and strategy.

Wally works on his speed, and tries to develop other options, like explosives, as an alternative to the Flash’s ability to vibrate through solid objects.

M’gann works on developing and honing her powers, getting them back to the level she had achieved within the simulation.

(She misses the life she’d made in the cracks between saving the world with the new Justice League and taking her uncle’s position as resident telepath, and she tries not to let the memories and feelings spill over into the mental link between ~~Batman~~ Robin and her.)

Robin fights his memories, refines his hacking, develops a new style of hand-to-hand that won’t fit his body for years, even as he refines the different styles his muscles remember but his brain tells him his limbs are too long for.  On missions, he fights his instinct to take control and mold the team into what they could have been.

(He misses Jason’s guns and taunts, and Tim’s dry humor and hacking, and Dami’s sarcasm and effort to be the best Robin since Dick himself had used the name.)

They’re sent on missions, and they come back with new experiences and new frustrations, old bonds stretched thin and scabbing over.

~IiI~

“I’ve got the guys on the South Side.”

“No, Robin.  Wait for me to get there.”

Robin grits his teeth.  “I can take them, Batman.  Otherwise, their tertiary leader might get away, and I’m pretty sure he’s got enough sense and resources to try this again in another city.”

“No, Robin,” Batman growls.  “Wait for – ”

“Going in,” Robin says, channeling the snark of a ten-year-old raised in the League of Assassins who ~~wears~~ had worn the same colors.

~IiI~

“Kaldur, if we split up with M’gann _and_ you in the water, we’d have a better chance of catching any who manage to break away from the – ”

“Robin, that leaves Wally as the only ground force.”

Robin pauses, mentally reassess Kid Flash’s current top speeds.

“I’ll take one of the bikes with us.  Superboy can either take Sphere or –”

“Sphere can fly?”

“Well, that’s what…” Robin’s face closes off.  “Well, Sphere can fly, I think.  We could ask?”

Kaldur shakes his head.  “No, we don’t have time.  Ms. Martian will join you in the air, while Superboy takes the ground with Kid Flash.”

(Superboy and Kid Flash end up fighting, blowing their cover, and while the mission is a success, Robin makes sure to ask Sphere if she can fly in front of Kaldur.  It’s a petty kind of satisfying when she transforms, but that’s the only kind of satisfaction Robin can get these days.)

~IiI~

“Dick, what the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing, Babs, don’t worry about it,” Dick mutters, continuing to work on the designs he’d thought up 20 years ago.

“Dick, you’ve been working on that computer for months.  You’re done programing it, but you haven’t put it down.”

“It’s just.  Something personal.  I’ll probably tell you when I’m done.”  Dick has been trained to let Babs in – she was his shoulder to lean on when Gotham got to be too much and too crazy for even him to handle.  She understood that sometimes he just needed to step away from the Mission, from crime, to find Dick Grayson again, and unearth him from Batman’s shadow.

“You’ll actually tell me this time?”

“What?” Dick blinks up from the computer screen to see a frustrated, tired scowl on Barbra’s face.

“You keep saying you’ll tell me, now, but you haven’t yet.  I guess it’s better than the lame excuses you used to give before, though, so I’ll take it.  But you can’t keep me waiting forever, Grayson,” and now she has the face that got Dick to welcome her into the Batcave when she initially debuted as Batgirl, “life and friendship doesn’t work like that.”

Dick clears his throat.  “Uh, yeah, Babs, I’ll tell you.  Really.”

She smiles.  “Good.”

And Dick remembers another reason why being a teenager sucks.

~IiI~

Tensions between Batman and Robin rise from the first patrol following the simulation and never settle to what they were, back before the simulation.

Dick is 17, is 50, has copied and compared the crimes and invasions and world threats he and Ms. Martian had thought up and draped over the framework of the simulation to the ones they face now, in “reality.”

(How can Dick call this reality?  He’s spent most of his life in a simulation where everything went wrong, but he survived and built a family in the rubble.)

They’re not perfect mirrors, the simulation and this place, but there’s enough carry over to take notes and slip them into the Batcomputer.  Maybe it’ll help Batman, maybe more people can be saved than when Dick was involved, because that’s what he thought was best, or that’s how he thought Batman would handle it.

He slowly squirrels away different things he refuses to leave without – his computer, pictures of his parents, a poster.  He hides different pieces of equipment, because he cannot be Batman, not now, but he can be Nightwing to a different city, one like Gotham once was.

The day Robin leaves the nest for real, Nightwing flies in Blüdhaven’s skies.

~IiI~ 

Half a year later, Jason Todd is adopted by Bruce Wayne.  A year later and Robin soars above Gotham once more.

Dick sits at his crappy dining room table and resists the urges to scream, to cry, to bury himself in memories of a life already lived, where a boy – a man – by that same name wore the same uniform and flew as the gun-toting Red Hood.

He puts the paper to the side, downs the remaining half of his still hot cup of coffee, and climbs into his car to head to the Blüdhaven police station.  On the way, he tries to convince himself that he should go and visit his ~~olderst~~ new brother the next time he has a break in his schedule.

(“Hey, Jason,” he’ll say, three weeks later, with a smile on his face, “Welcome to the family!”)

~IiI~

Jason isn’t quite sure what to make of the former Robin that appeared on the steps of Wayne Manor with a broken smile and a proclamation that he was family.  Where was the guy when he actually got adopted?  Why the fuck did it take so long for him to show up? Wasn’t this the guy that ran around cackling like a maniac and made Gotham’s criminals shit themselves?

So he’s justifiably wary of Dick Grayson, especially since Jason is the new Robin.

“Um, hi.”

“Hey, so, I’ll see you on patrol tonight.  I’ve gotta ditch my stuff and then head out to look at some things.”

“Right.”

That’s as much interaction as they have for months.  Dick (and honestly, considering his behavior, Jason can’t think of a better name for him) will come over, give his obligatory hellos and then fuck off somewhere, usually the cave.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, Dick brings over a treat, as if that makes up for his bizarre behavior and cold silences in between training sessions and weird patrols.

“Isn’t it your favorite ice cream?” he’ll ask, handing over a pint of the stuff from a place Jason hasn’t even heard of.

“Don’t you like these?”

“Here!  I saw them and thought of you!”

“I thought you liked things like this, so I got some for you.”

Dick doesn’t know Jason – and, hell, none of that information is written anywhere because _Batman_ doesn’t care if Jason likes triple chocolate ice cream, although he might know it anyways because _detective, duh._   But that’s the thing.  _Alfred_ probably knows Jason the best, doesn’t really compare him to the original golden child, and _he_ doesn’t know about some of the things that make Dick gift him random books or other knickknacks or food.  Sure, sometimes the guy gets it really wrong, but more often than not, he's right about what Jason likes.

Hell, _Jason_ doesn’t know why Dick gives him half of the things he does, but he generally finds that he likes them, which is basically the only thing preventing him from throwing the gifts in Dick’s face some days.

Okay, most days, now.

It’s gotten better, they can banter now, and Jason receives less of a cold shoulder and more blank silences, like Dick is remembering something or someone and is seeing Jason through those shards of memory.

Whatever, they’re doing better now.

But Jason isn’t blind – he sees the tension between Bruce and Dick, Batman and Nightwing.  He’ll occasionally hear the yelling, but Dick seems to surround himself in ice (which is very, very different from the stories other vigilantes and even villains tell about the first Robin) and not even Bruce can break it.

It’s strange that Jason sometimes can (or maybe he just makes it worse).

After all, wasn’t Dick Grayson the golden son?  And if he could fall from Bruce’s grace, what did that say for Jason, the street rat?

(Jason Todd meets the Young Justice team a few months before Wally West and Artemis Crock decide to move on from the vigilante lifestyle.  He hears allusions to a mission gone wrong, how Robin went from who he was, to a mini-Batman, before evening out into the current version of Nightwing.

He hacks the systems, and finds none of the files he should have found, but he’s trained as a hacker and so he digs.  It becomes a side-project – he’ll learn from Nightwing’s mistakes, Batman – Bruce – won’t push him out, and maybe he’ll even be able to understand Nightwing’s erratic behavior better.

Eight months later, he looks for his birth mother.

Nine months later, he’s found her and the Joker, and nothing else matters because Robin is dead, and Jason Todd with him.)

~IiI~

Tim Drake meets Dick Grayson of the Flying Graysons when he’s nearly three and the older boy is nine.

Tim Drake meets Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne’s ward, when he’s six, and the other boy is thirteen and his babysitter (Tim isn’t sure why he needs a babysitter – he never had one before, but whatever, and Dick is awesome and everything Tim wants in an older brother, so it’s not like Tim is going to _complain_.  Not that he has anyone to complain to anyways.

He notices that sometimes Dick zones out more, after some really long camping trip with friends, but it’s usually pretty easy to bring Dick back to the present, he just has to talk to him.  It’s not like it’s any hardship for Tim, who would otherwise be talking to the walls or making up conversations in his head or reading.)

Tim is seven and _knows_ that once this stupid party is done, Robin is going to fly in the skies and Tim will have to make sure to bring some hand warmers if he wants to keep his toes warm tonight when he goes bird watching.

Tim watches the Robins switch, the rise of a new bird – even if he only hears about that one, since he can’t convince anyone to take him to Blüdhaven.  He sees the hole in the skies, where a young bird once flew, sees Batman going off the rails, and makes his way to Blüdhaven as only a determined teenager can.

“No, I can’t go back to being Robin.”

“But Dick, he _needs_ someone to be Robin.”

Dick’s face closes of even further, even as a wry smile twists his lips.  “Trust me, Tim, I can’t be Robin again, even if I tried.  I’m not Robin anymore – I wouldn’t be doing justice to Robin as a whole, or to either Jason or Bruce.”

So Tim becomes Robin, and sometimes Dick looks so, so sad when he stares at Tim’s costume, nearly says the wrong name, although Time never quite manages to piece who he’s looking for together.

And then Red Hood comes back, but it’s not the Joker and everything goes to hell.

* * *

The end.

Unfortunately didn't quite get to Damian, which sucks because he's pretty darn amazing, but that's as far as I got before the muse up and left.

As always, kudos, comments, and concrit is welcome :)  You can also find me at [fins-illusion.tumblr.com](http://fins-illusion.tumblr.com).

~Fins


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